Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Goldman Sachs - A Great Quarter!


How could I not do a brief post on the GS earnings report? Wow and congrats. Net income of $1.81 billion for the quarter is nothing short of amazing given the environment. What that is telling us about the industry in general is less obvious. Some will do well, some will not. There is no doubt that Goldman was early to recognize that there were going to be major problems in credit product, and i believe turned the ship around quite well. Though I have not done any homework on this, I would assume that they are making a lot of money due to very wide bid ask spreads. With many of the competitors know gone, they are well positioned on the trading side to print a lot of money. They are also raising some mega sized funds in credit products which will generate some nice fees, but man of man, some of their funds have had major issues and I am sure that has caused problems with many a private wealth client. I should now because I am in some of them. This has got to be true of almost all the large firms that take a fairly traditional approach to how they run their business - meaning have clients own a lot of equities, private equity and hedge funds. Most people I know are doing a serious review of their providers and really holding them accountable for performance, as one should always do. The problem for many is - where do you go? Who is better then the next? Good question and one I should truly address in a how to evaluate a wealth manager essay! I have learned so many investing lessons over the years and I am trying hard to put them in to practise. A few of them are: keep it simple if you can, maintain liquidity as you never know when you might need it, don't get talked in to something you do not understand, try to have transparency in all your investments, proper due diligence pays off and most importantly for me is , trust my instincts! Have a good evening....

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